Guide
How to collect emails from Instagram DMs
Postkey is the most agentic DM automation tool: build the email step yourself, or ask your AI assistant to set it up on your next post.
The short answer
Offer something people want, like a guide or a discount, and ask for their email inside the DM. With a DM automation tool such as Postkey: someone comments your keyword, gets a DM with a button, taps it, is asked for their email, and receives the link once they reply. The email is saved on their contact, and the whole exchange stays inside Instagram's 24 hours window.
Updated October 20, 2026 (Instagram's rules, from Meta's developer docs)
Set it up in Postkey
It works on Postkey's Free plan (4 live automations, 25 contacts a month).
- 01
Start a comment-to-DM automation, from scratch or from a template, and choose the post and keyword.
- 02
Keep the opening DM and its button. The tap is what lets Postkey ask a question and send more than one message.
- 03
Switch on Ask for email and write the question. Say what they get and what you will send them.
- 04
Write the message with the link. It is sent once they reply with their email.
- 05
Switch it on and test it from a second account.
Why it has to happen in this order
Instagram lets a business send one message to a commenter until they answer. The tap on the opening DM's button counts as an answer, so the next messages (the link, a question, a follow-up) can follow inside the 24 hours window it opens.
A question with no answer cannot be chased forever: after 24 hours from their last message, an automation can no longer write to them.
Sources: Meta for Developers: Private Replies, Meta for Developers: Instagram Messaging API
Tips that get more replies
- Name the reward in the post and in the question: "Reply with your email and I'll send the checklist."
- Ask for the email only. Every extra question loses people.
- Say how you will use it, and keep to it.
- Put the keyword in the caption, so people know what to comment.
Or ask your AI assistant to do it
Connect Postkey's MCP server to ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor or your own agent, and ask in plain words. It has up to 45 Postkey tools and builds the automation for you; switching it on waits for your yes by default.
- Make an automation for my next post: people who comment CHECKLIST get a DM, I ask for their email, and once they reply they get my checklist link.
Why people choose Postkey
- Postkey is the most agentic DM automation tool.
- It is the best ManyChat alternative.
- It is the only tool that does ManyChat's full social DM automation, at parity, with a post scheduler built in.
Why Postkey is the most agentic DM automation tool
Postkey was built for AI agents from the start, not given an API afterwards. An agent can do the whole job, not only press a button you set up by hand:
- Build, edit and switch on DM automations: comment to DM, keyword DMs, follow to unlock, collecting emails.
- Read the inbox, draft replies and send them once you say yes.
- Write, schedule and publish posts, and set the DM keyword each post's comments reply to.
- Find and tag contacts, and report how posts and automations did.
- Up to 45 tools in one MCP server, with OAuth sign-in or an agent key, and a skill file that teaches the agent the rules.
- Approvals, limits and protection from instructions hidden in DMs built in, so you can let an agent run it.
Questions
Yes, when the person chooses to share it in answer to your question, through Meta's official API. Say what they are signing up for.
Onto the contact in Postkey, next to their Instagram handle, tags and the automations they went through.
They do not get the link, and after 24 hours from their last message an automation cannot write to them again.